


Waiting

by MathConcepts



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker and Andy have a friends with benefits thing going on, Booker's ever present angst, Drabble, M/M, Other, mentions of past and temporary character death, re: Booker waiting for the rest of the team to wake up, references to Booker casual alcoholism, references to unhealthy coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25995988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: The waiting is the hardest part.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 7
Kudos: 79





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back on the team has ISSUES bullshit. Set just before the team's year of hiatus, so roughly two years pre-movie. Enjoy.
> 
> Title from the Tom Petty song of the same name

He drags himself to the wall, his breathing loud - too loud - in his ears. The blood on the floor makes it easier to move, it slicks the tiles under him, letting him half-crawl half -slide until he can rest his head on the wall. There's a jagged gash on one leg, the flesh has been torn down to the bone, and it's still oozing blood and fatty tissue even as it heals. It's nothing he pays attention to, it's one wound in a sea of thousands.  
  
" _Andy._ " he calls out into the red-stained void around him. There's no reply. He can see her in the fall of the only light that hasn't been busted out, a long dark stain on the concrete and viscera. She's not moving, or breathing. Joe is crumpled beside her, one hand thrown out and away from his body, as if he's reaching for Nicky, who lies much farther away from them both, in the picturesque placement of a castaway doll.  
  
None of them are breathing. _Merde, merde_. It'll just take some time. He closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out, then stops, because he's the _only_ one breathing. It quickly becomes a solo competition to see how long he can hold his breath until someone, anyone starts to stir.  
  
His personal record is four minutes, twenty or so seconds can be added if he bothers to concentrate. Joe and Nicky, who have several hundred years experience in certain sexual activities clock in at about eight minutes each.   
  
Andy, for reasons she will not elaborate on, although they know, they all know _why_ , can go for eleven minutes strong. She is the boss, after all. It's two minutes and forty seconds into his pithy personal record when he feels it, the first writhing of alarm in his gut.   
  
No. They will wake up, they always have before. Why would this be the day that it all goes to hell? It's getting away from him again, that ever present background noise that tells him it's _worthless_ and _hopeless_ , and _useless_ , and you're here all alone.  
  
He's not, because they are coming back, see?  
  
They are.

They are.  
  
  
But he is alone right now.  
  
  
They are...  
  
  
They are...

...are they?  
  
Two minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds. They've been dead for four minutes before that already.  
  
The longest anyone of them had ever taken to wake up - that he knows of - was nine minutes, as the era of modern weapons and their destructive capabilities rolled around. He remembers Nicky fighting like a tiger, Andy screaming to _fucking hold him_ so he wouldn't compromise their location as he scratched and kicked and screamed for _Joe! Joe! Joe!_. Andy slipping out around the six minute mark to retrieve what they all thought was Joe's body, Nicky fucking crying, sobbing, mumbling incomprehensibly, the only words Booker could understand out of the mix of what he surmised was ancient Latin and Aramaic were a litany of _my love_ , _please my lord_ , _please_ , _don't take him from me_ , _my love_ , _my love_... _please_...  
  
Fucked him over so completely he didn't come out of the bottle until the next job.  
  
  
They're coming back.  
  
  
They're not.  
  
  
Three minutes.   
  
  
Andy wakes with a choked gasp, shunting herself onto her side to spit out chunks of her own brain matter, and Booker feels every bone in his body go liquid with relief. He breathes. He hasn't beaten his own record yet, but that's okay. Very, very okay. Joe and Nicky wake at more or less the same time - because of course, as if they can't find a way to be anymore of two parts of a whole _asshole_ \- coordinated in death as they are in life, and the final string of anxiety loosens when they meet each other's eyes across the warehouse (now slaughterhouse)  
  
Booker's fingers shake around his gun as he takes it and forces himself to his feet on legs jellied from the dissipating adrenaline. Waiting is an extreme sport, for people like him. _Them_.  
  
"Fucking slow," he grunts, unable to form more words than that. Andy lets out an affected sigh, begins the process of peeling herself out of her own blood and guts.  
  
"Fuck you, Booker." she mumbles around what's probably a chunk of her frontal lobe. The way her head got blown in, it could be some of the brainstem too.  
  
"Maybe later." And he's not joking. If she's agreeable, he'll go to bed with her, as he sometimes does. He'll need it after this, the closeness, the feeling of her warm and alive. They don't even have to fuck, and they probably won't. What they mostly do after jobs like these are sleep and eat, the fucking comes after, when Joe and Nicky finally detach themselves from each other's hips long enough to find their zippers, and depends on whether or not Andy has relived sufficient memories of the past to warrant her wanting to drown them in sex. Decisions, decisions.  
  
They pull themselves together and leave the place, Booker swearing at them to hurry up under his breath all the while. He's waited enough for one day.   
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
